Wow.. I have such a backlog of topics I want to
talk about. Life's been pretty crazy these days but I'm finally buckling down
and giving myself some much needed word therapy.
So guess what! I decided to try my hand at home
brewing! This is something that I've idly thought about trying for probably a
year or two but never really thought too hard about it. Well, I'm
blessed with a significant other that listens to my idle thoughts even when I'm
not listening to them myself. I must have mentioned it to him because he bought
me a brewing kit from a local brew supply store for Christmas. Along with an awesome book titled How To
Brew by John Palmer, and it was the push I needed to really give this
whole thing a shot.
The brew kit I received included everything I needed to get started. I
spent several weeks before the brew day researching and reading. I joined an
online home brewing forum and that proved to be extremely helpful. I wanted to do a lot of research because I knew nothing about the process of brewing beer, but
knew enough to know that it’s pretty easy to totally screw up. A lot of what
it boils down to is sanitation and trying to eliminate any contact with contaminants. Which isn’t hard, just takes some planning and paying close
attention to what you’re doing. Otherwise the process is pretty straightforward.
That’s not to say I wasn’t convinced I had done just about everything wrong.
I sought out the advice of the experienced home brewers on the forum I
had joined and decided that my first brew should be an amber ale. It’s clean,
simple, and delicious. I decided to go with an
ingredient kit for this batch, and probably will for a few after that. Once I’m
more confident, I’ll probably move towards recipes and partial grain mashing.
After cleaning and sanitizing
everything (yes, there is a difference), I was ready to get started. I’m not
going to bore you with every last detail of this process just know you
basically make grain tea, add your malt extract, boil, add hops a few different
times (bittering, aroma, and finishing hops), then cool it quickly, get it into
your fermentation bucket, pitch the yeast, activate it, shut the lid, put on
your airlock, move it to a dark place where you can keep the ideal temperature,
and LEAVE IT ALONE. At this point, we have what’s called a wort- aka
unfermented beer. That’s all about to change. After a few hours or up to a day,
you’ll start to see the fermentation take place. The air lock will start to
bubble. It’s one of the most exciting and satisfying things I’ve seen! *At
least I didn’t screw it up that much!*
Let’s skip to bottling day. After about 2 weeks, we sanitized
everything, racked the fermented beer into our bottling bucket, added some corn
sugar solution (to aid in the bottle conditioning. This next fermentation is
what gives us carbonation), and got to work bottling 2 cases of beer. We had
a little left over to sample and it was….GOOD! Flat… but totally good! After
letting the beer condition in the bottle for a few days (we left it for about a
week and a half), they were good to go!
I’ve shared this batch with a lot of my friends and some experienced
home brewers. It seems to be a huge hit! It’s really exciting to see people enjoy
something that you worked so hard on and worried about so intensely. I’m even
enjoying one right now as I write this (okay I’m totally not. I’m eating ice
cream. But we’re going for mental aesthetics here.. work with me).
Of course there’s always room to improve. I’ve gotten lots of tips from
some home brewer friends on how to make it even better. I think my plan for the
next batch will be to brew another amber ale, take the tips, make adjustments
and compare the next batch. I’m so excited I finally got the push I needed to
give this a try. I really am so lucky to have found so many things in my life
that I genuinely love to do and to have the people by my side to cheer me on.
Soon I will be on my way to bigger and better beers!
Cheers,
Kim
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